In the past, article delivery and receiving systems have been mis-used by individuals to have unsolicited articles, items and packages delivered to people and/or organizations. Such practices have become widespread for delivering unsolicited marketing materials including advertisements and promotions, for products being offered for sale. The very nature of mail has allowed mass mailings of unsolicited commercial materials including low-interest, “pre-approved” credit cards to people who must spend time to collect such materials at the mailbox and then spend time to open, read and dispose of such materials. The destruction of unwanted materials is essential in many cases in order to avoid the possibility that such “credit cards” can not be mis-used by third parties who may retrieve improperly discarded “credit cards”.
Another disadvantage of the mail system is that an individual cannot access the mail addressed to the individual if the individual is away from the receiving mailbox because the review of incoming mail necessarily involves the receipt, opening, and appropriate disposition, all of which, in the past, have required the physical handling of mailed pieces and articled by the receiving party.
A more serious mis-use of article delivery systems involves the use of delivery systems to deliver dangerous materials to a receiving party. In most cases, the receiving party is unaware of the potential danger of opening the received item or article until it is too late and the received item or article has already been opened.
The recent reports of the delivery of dangerous biological materials such as anthrax, using the postal system, has made people in all countries vulnerable to a delivery system which has been trusted for many years. Private and/or commercial article delivery systems are also vulnerable to such mis-uses. Such delivery systems have been used for sending a wide-ranging array of hazardous and potentially life-threatening materials like plastic explosives, poisons, and other biological and chemical materials, to unsuspecting victims and organizations often with fatal and disastrous results.
The above noted vulnerabilities of most current delivery systems have caused many organizations to seek additional inspection systems to further safeguard employees from dangerous items and articles which are shipped between various individuals and/or corporations and/or government organizations. Thus, there is a need for a methodology and system for enabling improved processing of physical items received by an entity from a variety of sources.